The written life

Main menu

Category Archives: retrospective

Whatever brilliance we once had has disappeared. You said you hate feeling this way, but this feeling you can’t articulate is what you need. You need some shame, and a little bit of loneliness. You need to step out of the club at midnight, vomiting the remains of seven or ten vodka shots onto the pavement. Maybe then you’ll remember that we’re not so different after all.

I sometimes wonder why you did it, but I understand. Do you remember the night you went home after I had asked you to stay? It must have been early on, maybe in February or early March. I had asked you to stay and you said you couldn’t sleep there. I went to M’s party, steadfastly determined to drink myself into a haze. How old was M that day? I cannot remember. I only know that when I arrived, I could hear the music from the second floor all the way out on the street. I had to call him so he could come down and open the gate. The staircase was really strange, a self-contained building like a clock tower with doors leading off onto the floors. The door to M’s apartment was badly fitted, with an enormous space at the bottom where it should have been flush with the floor. He had the corner unit.

I’d been there once before when we first became friends. Then, the apartment was small with just the two of us in it. This time, every available space had been filled with bodies. We pushed through to the center, where a couple of girls were dancing. M pulled one aside and introduced her as his new girlfriend. Strangely enough, I’d never seen her before.